A few observations from pve

I want to write about a few things that I've encounter in pve, and I hope will be addressed in GW2. There are two main things I'd like to talk about. The first is Death Penalty as an actual penalty, and the second involves the introduction of the pve only skills. For example, Fissure of Woe and other high end pve locations used to take much longer than they currently do. Among other challenges that were tough when first introduced was Sorrow's Furnace, UW, The Deep, Urgoz's Warren and DoA. There are two main reasons for this: dp removal, and pve only skills.

I feel pve lacks a lot of the finesse that it used to take. On of the reasons is most definitely the availability of death penalty removal. Basically, people do not need to worry about dying. These days, people feel as though death penalty is more of an inconvenience, and really it is, especially because removal of DP is so easy. Why not just remove DP all together? This does two things for the game that I feel are not good. The first is that in general, people are essentially given permission to play badly. This is a huge trend sweeping all across the game, but no where is it more apparent than in pve. This type of downward trend gives rise to the title elitism that has always had a hold on many aspects of this game. The second point about losing DP is that it no longer encourages people to play creatively and thoughtfully. They die, remove DP, and go right at it again. Rinse and repeat ad infinium. There's no thought required on how to manage your DP, or how to clean your DP through performing well. This kind of play is especially lacking in vanquishing and other intensive pve situations. So, really, death penalty should be appropriately called death inconvenience.

The second issue of PvE only skills is a little less black and white for me. PvE skills have good and bad sides. They allowed class diversification through skill homogenization. In PvE, rolling a mesmer these days does not immediately mean you will have to H/H everything. EotN's PvE skills helped many classes break into areas that they previously had not been able to even think about before. Cryway DoA was very popular for a little bit, and the popularity of Mesmers soared. Paragons now have the Imbagon niche, but lack very many other outlets for pve other than running an Imbagon build. Other classes that don't fit well into the pve holy triangle benefit from the EotN style pve skills. There are, however, a few gripes with pve skills that I have to voice. A lot of pve skills are obviously designed to give the player a huge advantage. I feel as though this, in combination with the DP removal, has made playing pve at the higher level a bit less challenging. Loot is loot, but I think what makes things fun is the journey. Additionally, I feel as though the "dumbing down" of Guild Wars just makes for a terrible pvp game, as it doesn't encourage creative and active playing, but instead encourages players to approach pvp with a pve mentality, and that is where it gets very dangerous.

As an example for the kind of challenge I'm talking about, take for example the mission Minister Cho's Estate vs something like Grand Court of Sebelkeh both in HM. Minister Cho's Estate is a simple "run through and destroy everything" while Grand Court is a bit more involved, conceptually. I would like to see more engaging challenges in GW2. I kind of just rambled, but I hope that some people will agree, and I'm sure others will disagree.

What do you guys think? Is time efficiency the only measure of challenge in pve? Do dp removal and pve skills affect the development of pve farming builds? What are some challenges in pve that are not time based? How can challenge in pve be increased?

There is no perfect game, everything has its flaws

Farming is only necessary because the gameplay itself of the 'main' game and it's aspects (dungeons,missions etc.) are not rewarding. Removing the main reasoning for farming,and that should help tackle the need for abusing pve skills.

Moved to Riverside, this is definitely a topic more set for discussion than as a suggestion.

personally to me, DP is more a problem in HM areas in the lower parts of the game( noob island in factions for example). There you have a higher chance of dying due to lack of party strength.

But reffering to end game areas and such.... Ppl remove DP and such b/c in HM areas 60% and your gone. And trust me, nothing is more annoying then having known you jsut wasted 2hrs doing something b/c you got kicked out b/c of a thing that you could have prevented(DP).

As for Pve Skills. I perosnally love them b/c as you said they offer class diversion. And, for them to be really any good, you need to level up the ranks, so you esseentially worked for those skills.
So overall no i dotn think that pve skills are a prob, and DP is an inconvience that can turn deadly.

Boost rewards for doing FUN things in the game, and all is golden, I am sure alot of farmers don't actually enjoy farming (don't get me wrong, some people do of course)

PvE skills were never needed before, and adding them just made farming more prevalent

Oh, the usual:

Remove Hard Mode
Remove party-wide loot, same amount of drops regardless of players in group
Kill heroes
Remove titles
Kill invincibuilds
Mobsize equal to or slightly larger than human party
Smarter monsters, better skillbars
More quests involving a wide range of skills to complete

Basically remove incentives to farm, grind and throwing people's lives away. More incentives to form groups and develop team play/attitude. For comparison think of the golden days of prophecies, especially Thunderhead Keep. <3

You say Remove HM as your first point.

Let me ask you;

Why would any-one play longer than 2 months?
In 2 months, a terrible player, playing only an hour a day, beats all campaigns, on atleast 1 character.

The game is "Dying" Now, according to people.
With your suggestions? It'd have died a month or 2 after Eotn was out, because there'd be no incentive to play at all.

Your post is exactly the kind of mentality that I am talking about. "it's so inconvenient to 'waste' 2 hours because you get booted when you have 60% DP".

Isn't that the point of DP?

It's supposed to make you think about your team build, your skills, and your decisions. I feel you're approaching the DP problem from the other side. I strongly believe that this mentality towards DP is the main problem behind the lack of finesse in pve. DP should not be something that's an inconvenience, it should be a penalty.

Old school THK (before the nerf) was super fun. It actually challenged a team of humans. Then people started figuring out that you could just sit at the king, and well, the mission devolved into something of a tank and spank waiting game. The original THK was a lot of fun, and while the tank and spank way may be easier (and it certainly was), the "real" way to do THK was infinitely more fun and engaging.

The problem is that with all these things lowering the bar of entry into end-game PvE now, it is unfeasible to remove end-game without first making normal mode PvE the equivalent to the current HM.

heroes, pve skills, dp removal, consumables of any kind, summoning stones........these follow a long-established line of power creep that many games have as they advance in age. I think it may be inevitable, to keep people interested you must introduce new mechanics and items.

I did, but note that I also say "add smarter monsters, better skillbars". This means I'd like to see the current "hard mode" replaced with another type of "hard mode", namely one where abusing "tanking", spirits and other gimmicks would no longer be feasible. Make it more similar to pvp, having a goal to prepare the way to pvp or at least more challenging and active play in pve.

To me playing a mmorpg(or whatever it's called) is all about social interaction, regardless of whether it's pvp or pve. If I wanted to run around with heroes I would settle for a single player game. If I wanted to picture myself in a shiny armor I'd close my eyes and start dreaming about it.

I don't know why people would play longer than 2 months tbh and to me that's irrelevant. If they don't find the game fun they shouldn't play it is how I see it. With my assumption that people don't actually enjoy the grind itself this implies that most people should for their own benefit quit the game, or should have a long time ago.

To preempt what is bound to come("You don't know what people want! They LIKE grind!") I readily admit that I don't have the authority to tell how people feel or should feel. But personally I am convinced that this whole grind business is a form of addiction or brain washing. People like to experience "achievement" and "progress", but when the achievements are made easier - only more time consuming what is left? I think I can have the majority agree that running out of Droknar's Forge to the troll cave 500 times in a row is NOT fun in itself, similarly clicking 7 stacks of alcohol over a period of days and weeks is NOT fun in itself either. Still people seem obsessed with seeing progress bars fill up. Why?

My vision is simply to remove these clearly grind based tasks and replace them with other "more meaningful" tasks that are in themselves more fun. In my own experience I like to pug FoW, not because the rewards are high but because it's fun to see people get into arguments and others trying to make the people work together etc. I mostly pvp though, because this is where I find the most FUN. I play the different formats based on how fun and accessible they are, not the rewards they yield. If I wanted kurzick/luxon faction I would do speed clears rather than AB. Yet I never speed clear and will happily switch sides in AB even at the cost of losing faction every time. I'm not alone in this, but I suppose I belong to a minority. Does the minority see something the majority does not or is the majority always correct?

Another guy posted this link in another thread: http://progressquest.com/ I find that concept spot on and totally hilarious. People in GW seem to go for the same objective, faster and more effective(boring) farming methods to achieve "progress". So if progress is the ultimate goal, why not remove the boring grind to get there?

I don't know how to respond to "the game is dying". Apparently it's been dying for years now and it will probably be "dying" for another couple of years. If anything I'd say that this is the result of the path of grind that was implemented. Even if the opposite was true, that more senseless titles kept the game on life support I'd rather pull the plug.

tl;dr - See my previous post..

Honestly title grind PvE skills are the most damaging addition to guild wars in my opinion. It used to be that your build was only as good as you were clever, or as good as you were at using it properly. Now you have builds which are good because you spend 20-30 hours grinding titles and basically just use these stupidly powerful PvE skills as a crutch, which don't require any though or motivation to be a better player... just grind your title, and spam your new win buttons.

You mention Mesmer getting popularity... the Me/A build is seriously the most offensive thing I've ever seen in guild wars, just abusing fast casting to spam stupidly overpowered pve skills... that is NOT the type of game guild wars used to be. Yes, there have always been certain builds which were very good, maybe even OP, but that was usually due to several skills working together and synergizing so beautifully. Now we have just a random assortment of skills that are just stupidly strong by themselves and you throw them together without a second thought.

Hardmodes and the end dungeons are a great thing, they give a challenge to people who otherwise would be bored with the game, but I don't see what the point of offering challenging content and then adding ridiculosu skills to trivialize said content. I remember, myself included, how much people wanted to see a PvE/PvP split, but if i had known the end result would be this I'd prefer to go back to everyone sharing the same skills and leaving room for creativity instead of everying carrying their three pve skills, and elite and then some kind of filler.

Funnily enough, I am also a GvG junkie. However, I don't want to turn this thread into a pvp vs pve thread, because those end up going south really quickly.

true, DP removal is so readily available that DP doesn't even really matter anymore. quite rediculous.

I enjoy PvE skills, they are fun to use (some of them at least). I agree that they remove the learning nature of the game though. I often times see people complain that they can't do certain things because they don't have access to a particular PvE skill yet. This just means they haven't learned how to use the normal skills effectively. Everything can be done without PvE skills, and yes, it means most of those things will take longer. I do not really want to see PvE skills removed, but I wouldn't be too sad to see it happen. I learned how to play the game, so not having the PvE skills will just mean a few things will take longer.

DP.... not really sure, and I am probably rare in my view on this. I hate dying. HATE it. It drives me nuts to see people dye with no regard to what may result from it. In fact, I sat with a rezbot hero and BiPed my way through my Candy Canes and other DP removers for my Sweet Tooth title because I rarely need them when playing. But I do agree that people in general do not realize dying is bad, and will just rez and use a Powerstone, Candy Cane, etc. And the amount of XP you get in HM means that any DP you get will be gone fast anyway. So I guess I would be happy to see a larger 'penalty' for deaths, but don't really think it is needed. Instead, I'd say it would be better to reduce the ways to acquire and/or the amount removed with the consumables.

Sorry for the confusion, but I wasn't adressing you.
I meant, No HM was nice for the first bit, yes THK was hard, and fun, and rewarding.
But the point is.
The game is 5 years old, it'd be unfathomable to remove HM at this point (Or any point after implementation)
Because GW, as it stands, is just too easy of a game.

(Before you argue "You never played THK when it was hard")
I played since Day 1, and I literally beat Prophecies in a month, casually.

I'm not completely sold on my point about PvE skills. I think the PvE skills do bring something to the mix, and allow classes like mesmers to get a slot in a party. Your point about playing effectively without the PvE skills though, that is a huge point that I neglected to mention explicitly. You hit the nail on the head with that one.

your point about mesmers only goes to show there's something wrong with mesmers, not that pve skills are a good thing.

Sounds like GW has just stopped being new and interesting to you. It happens to most games after a year or less. Its amazing and a good sign that GW has maintained a reliable base of players for 5 years.

What can they do about it?

Release GW2

Hard mode was the mistake really, but it could be seen as far back as DoA. Most of the playbase doesn't want a challenge, but they feel entitled to HM and its titles. So we get an ever increasing player creep of heroes, pve skills, consumables, and finally the skillsplit to atone for Anet's original mistake. The main problem is difficulty and player powers evolved in very assymetrical and imbalanced ways, making a relatively balanced (albeit easy) normal mode into the pve balance nightmare we have now.